Archive for April 2015

Welcome to another episode of The Dentalpreneur Podcast. On today’s show we’re talking with Dr. Jason Lowry. Dr. Lowry is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Dental. Dr. Lowry is also a practicing dentist that owns a very profitable, multimillion dollar dental office in small town USA: Kingman, Arizona. Dr. Lowry will go over just how he found his niche in dentistry and how you can find, advertise, and profit from your niche as well.

All of that and more on today’s episode of The Dentalpreneur.

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Dr. Jason Lowry attended The Ohio State University. He has a beautiful wife named Amy and four amazing children. Growing up Jason did not always want to be a dentist. After high school he knew he wanted to be in health care, but after spending time in South America after high school, found it hard to come back to those tough math and science classes. It was then Dr. Lowry decided to major in business and Spanish instead. Only months away from graduating he spoke with some friends and counselors and explained to them he just was not happy.

The counselors then set Jason up with a dentist to shadow. That was when Jason had his big moment. The dentist Jason was observing was working on a patient who had a cleft palate. This patient was only in his early 20’s and already had multiple surgeries. On the outside the patient looked good, but inside his mouth was a wreck. The dentist Jason was shadowing that day was doing a fixed anterior bridge and when the assistants were done with the temporaries the patient looked in the mirror and cried, he was so happy and grateful to have a smile. Jason knew then that dentistry was for him.

In this episode you’ll hear:

What Catalyst Dental is and how it has created huge profit for Dr. Lowry

Why dentists need to be proactive in getting their patients attention

Lowry’s view on niche dentistry and how to attract patients for those niches

Dr. Jason Lowry goes into detail on this episode about:

How Dr. Lowry found his niche in dental Implants. Dr. Lowry is constantly taking CE courses to further improve his skills and now can even do some of the hardest implant cases. Dr. Lowry’s practice however resides in small town. The population in Kingman is about 35,000 and it is a very blue color town with not a lot of money coursing through its veins.

Dr. Lowry found a way to advertise his niche, which happens to be one of the mostly costly procedures to the patients, in a way where patients are lined up to get their dental implants.

Dr. Lowry is the founder of Catalyst Dental which has brought his numbers from 5 implants a month in 2011 to 26+ in 2013, once he really got Catalyst Dental up and going.

What is Catalyst Dental?

Catalyst Dental is a seminar kit that Dr. Lowry created for his patients to inform them about dental implants.

The seminars are similar to a lunch and learn style presentation, and all patients or non patients are invited

The kit contains a 40 page color A-Z guide on how to get started and set up the implant seminars for your office

2 CDs explain how to set up the room for these seminars and exactly how to market them

40 slide power point presentation to show at the seminars

Checklist to follow up with all patients and potential maybes, so that you do not let any potential patients slip through the cracks

These seminars have helped bring Dr. Lowry’s office to become the profitable office it is today. They also take the time to truly inform your patients of the procedure and the benefits of doing it.

There is a whole lot of great information on this episode, thanks to Dr. Jason Lowry. As always thanks for joining us. See you next time on The Dentalpreneur podcast.

Imagine for a moment that you have the exact Blueprint for creating your dream practice… a multi-million dollar business with an overhead below 50% that is free of stress and chaos, grows steadily year after year, is run by a happy team and is filled with thousands of satisfied patients who refer their friends and family. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

Well, I have some good news and some bad news.

Good News: Everything that you need to create this dream practice is readily available to any dentist. I’ve literally given the tactics and strategies away for free in my book, in my lectures, in my blog posts, podcast interviews and videos. It’s all out their just waiting for anybody who wants it to swipe and deploy.

Bad News: Regardless of the quality and thoroughness of the tools that you are provided, no progress or change will occur unless the owner of the practice will commit to just one thing…

Click above to watch video

In this video, I’ll discuss:

How to get the best effort from your team everyday

How to overcome the dreaded “Time Clock” syndrome

How to integrate John Maxwell’s Leadership principles into your dental practice

How to immediately increase your level of effectiveness and execution

*** Let’s chat! If you would like to set up a time to chat with me about how to get your practice to the next level, simply reply to this email with your name and a request to “speak to Mark'” and someone from my awesome team will set it immediately!

Welcome to another episode of The Dentalpreneur Podcast. On today’s show we’re talking with Judy Kay. Judy is a very successful coach in the dental field that focuses on conflict resolution within your practice to primarily make the work place for you, your staff, and your patients more enjoyable. Even though Judy’s main focus is not increasing revenue in your practice; by increasing staff morale, it’s something you, your staff, and your patients will feel hence increasing the cash flow in the practice.

Patients can feel when there is tension in the office either between co workers or even between staff and the patient. These feelings are going to drive patients away because, let’s face it, who wants to be put in an uncomfortable situation. This is why Judy is such a successful coach. With her positive attitude she can mend the leaks in your practice that could be costing you money, patients and possibly even good employees.

All of that and more on today’s episode of The Dentalpreneur.

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Judy started out in the dental field in 1982 as a receptionist in the dental office. She then worked her way up the ladder and served as an administrator to many successful practices for close to 25 years. It is here that she got to experience the problems every dental office faces such as staff quarrels, and unfriendly patient care. Judy said she has always been a positive person even as a child and she said this is why when she started coaching she branched out into this specific sub-niche within the profession.

In this episode you’ll hear:

How to properly resolve a conflict between your dental staff

How to handle patient conflicts

What books can help you improve the moral of the office

How to efficiently define your practice standards and how to start implementing them into your practice.

How to inspire and educate your entire staff to success

How to make even the most difficult conversations easier

Judy goes into detail on this episode about:

The steps in successful conflict resolution within your staff to create a more unified team.

Most dentists have problems with leadership or being the bad guy in their own practices when it comes to conflicts between their staff. This often happens when the dentist has staff with strong personality traits and believes their practice would not survive without a particular staff member

Judy Recommends to first have a staff meeting with all of your employees and instead of pointing fingers ask in generally what they want out of their work place. Once this is defined, state what it is you want out of your practice

Then Judy states you should ask the staff how they plan on implementing these changes in the practice

Judy suggests a full day meeting once per year to get together with your staff and really nail out the standard attitudes, procedures and goals within your office so there will be not questions later on how to handle any given situation

Judy then suggests you meet at least quarterly to review and adjust attitudes as necessary

There’s a whole lot of great information on this episode, thanks to Judy Kay. As always thanks for joining us. See you next time on The Dentalpreneur podcast.

Welcome to another episode of The Dentalpreneur. On today’s show we’re talking with Charles Crawford. Charles is the young co-owner of the booming internet marketing company Crawford and O’Brien. He graduated ASU with his bachelor’s degree, where he majored in finance, and is a wiz in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and organic search ratings.

In this episode Dr. Mark Costes and Mr. Charles Crawford discuss how to get an acceptable ROI (return on investment) on your marketing dollar, how dentists are being taken advantage of by their internet services provider, and how any dentist can immediately increase their organic search rankings.

All of that and more on today’s episode of The Dentalpreneur.

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Charles and I met through a mutual client and ever since, I have been spreading the word about the great results his company is getting for dentists.

In 2012 he opened his company with a mentor of his who is a programming genius, and took on Charles’ dad, a dentist in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as their first client. Within two weeks his dad was receiving tons of new patients and in a month was on the first page of Google while making five figures on his ROI.

In this episode you’ll hear:

Why SEO is one of the most profitable areas to focus on for any dental practice.

Why a Facebook page is not enough, and what to do about it.

What tools can you use to enhance and strengthen your front office staff?

Why are Google ads so important?

What being #1 on Google means for your practice

Why every marketing company should be giving you reports on their progress

How to properly leverage YouTube

And much more!

Charles has a strategy for each of his clients depending on their office size, income and location. He then tailors the needs of potential clients in the area through social media.

Charles goes into detail on this episode about:

How he uses search engine optimization and Google ads to grow your dental practice and get those new patients in the door.

The team at Crawford and O’Brien is constantly monitoring your marketing to help you grow to be number one on Google, and to expand your patient base on social networking sites like Google Plus reviews, Facebook and YouTube.

Charles also discusses tracking the calls and numbers from each website and even the search engines patients went to when they looked up your practice.

The lack of tracking Charles says is one of the big things dentists are not doing that is hurting their practice. Tracking these patients helps the tech savvy team at Crawford and O’Brien better invest your money in more profitable internet marketing strategies for your practice.

Since each practice looks to spend on average 3 to 5 %of their monthly revenue in marketing, Charles recommends spending at least half of that in internet marketing. Then Charles suggests to track your monthly ROI and cut out the areas that are not working.

Charles shares with us the three big mistakes dentist make when it comes to internet marketing:

Doctors are not making their websites mobile responsive or mobile compliant, which does not allow a potential patient to bring up the doctors website on their phone. Making your website mobile compliant not only gets you a higher ranking on Google but gets more new patients in the office door because 85% of people will look up a website through a mobile device.

Using stock photos.There are too many doctors using photographs of models, which is impersonal and most importantly not appealing to the patients.

Making sure the phone number on the website is not an image but a clickable text that will call office.

There’s a whole lot of great information on this episode, thanks to Charles Crawford. As always thanks for joining us! See you next time on The Dentalpreneur podcast.

Welcome to another episode of The Dentalpreneur Podcast. On today’s show we’re talking with Neal Inscoe. Neal is the founder and CEO of Equity in Dentistry. He specializes in helping dentists transition their practices either by outright sale or partnership.

In this episode Dr. Mark Costes and Mr. Neal Inscoe will discuss, how to properly transition the dental practice you spent your life building in a variety of ways that will allow the transitioning dentist to come out on top. Neal explains where a lot of dentists go wrong in transitioning their practice and how to avoid those costly mistakes.

All of that and more on today’s episode of The Dentalpreneur.

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Neal and Dr. Costes met almost a decade ago at a conference in Florida where Neal and Dr. Costes were both speaking. Neal is a golf pro who ran multiple golf courses where he learned firsthand about business.

Neal also worked in real estate development and for big business firms like Pacific Mutual Financial Planning. Neal’s first business sale was of a dental practice, where he saw a need for the seller to have a real financial planner. Neal has now helped dentists transition their practices for eight years.

In this episode you’ll hear:

How can you find the right future partner?

Where are the best places to look for potential buyers for your practice?

When and how to start planning your transition out of your dental practice.

What’s the most profitable way to sell your practice?

How to avoid unnecessary taxes when you sell or take on a partner

Neal goes into detail on this episode about:

The four major types of transitions, and the pros and cons of each.

First is the Sell and Walk Away. This is a situation where the dentist sells his practice and stays on for only a short period of time to transition the practice between the dentists.

The second is the Reverse Associateship. This is where the doctor sells his practice but stays on as an associate. This usually happens because the selling doctor has not put away enough money to retire.

The great thing about this transition is it helps the existing patients to see the partnership of the new and old doctors, which builds trust among the patient base.

The unattractive part of this transition however is that the previous dentist might not like the new policies of the now owner of the practice and refuse to follow new policies. That is why these details need to be worked out prior to transition.

The third is Practice Expansion, Partnership, Group Expansion. This transition is generally the most lucrative of all the transitions for the dentist. This is where the dentist only sells part of the practice. This transition requires, protocols, interviews, testing, and trial periods.

The last one is the multiple practices approach. This is where a dentist sets up multiple practices to run as a group.

This transition takes a lot of planning and preparation. The dentist buys multiple practices and runs them using the same protocols and management.

In this transition the dentist becomes less of a health care practitioner and more of a manager.

When looking for these practices Neal recommends thinking about what you don’t want first such as high overhead. You then want to look for practices with value and one you know you can expand.

When a dentist does want to do a partnership, Neal has a very specific interview process that allows him to find the right partner for the practice.

First Neal advertises what the doctor and practice is looking for.

Then the potential partners interview with Neal and answer about ten to fifteen questions that allow Neal to pre-qualify the potential partners before they meet with the doctor. This allows Neal to save the doctor time by weeding out the applicants who just don’t fit the practice and doctors needs.

Next is the in office interview where the potential partner can tour the office, spend the morning working in the office and getting a feel of the patients, and spend the afternoon meeting with the staff.

After that Neal makes every potential partner take the Hartman Value Test to evaluate that person’s personality.

Then the there is the meeting with the spouses so that all the expectations are out in the open from both parties.

Finally there is the offer and trial period of the partnership.

Lastly Neal talks about how to avoid over paying in taxes after the sale of all or part of your practice. Neal advises to always do tax calculation ahead of time to identify exactly how much taxes you are going to have to pay. Neal also gives multiple ways to avoid certain taxes all together.

There’s a whole lot of great information on this episode, thanks to Neal Inscoe. As always thanks for joining us. See you next time on The Dentalpreneur podcast.

Welcome to another episode of The Dentalpreneur. On today’s show we’re covering an extremely important topic: how to negotiate with insurance companies. This show will help you decrease your write-offs and increase your collection rates.

Joining us to share his 8 years of wisdom in this area is Ben Tuinei of Veritas Dental Resources. Today Ben and I talk about his step by step process to negotiate with insurance companies for your maximum benefit, how to fine tune your billing department and the future of insurance in the dental industry.

All of that and more on today’s episode of The Dentalpreneur.

More About This Show

Since starting 8 years ago, Ben has successfully worked with dental practices to help them negotiate better results when dealing with insurance companies. He’s worked out a process that has resulted in over 5,000 dental practices bringing in a few billion dollars more in revenue. And yes that was a B in billion!

With his company, Veritas Dental Resources, Ben now helps dentists around the country use his methods to approach and artfully negotiate with insurance and have more claims covered and far less money being written off.

One of the most important points he makes today is to negotiate. If you aren’t actively negotiating your insurance claims you’re getting lower reimbursements.

In this episode you’ll hear:

What’s the biggest frustration dentists are facing today?

How many states have passed a non-coverage dental service law?

What’s the #1 cause for malpractice suits in Utah?

Why not to bring up insurance first when talking with a patient.

What are power play letters from insurance companies and what should you do if you receive one?

And much more!

And to help you negotiate for the best possible outcome Ben and I walk you through his process.

1. The first thing to keep in mind is all negotiations need to be done by you, the doctor. If your office manager or other team member tries to negotiate they won’t get the same outcome.

So be sure you are the person calling or returning calls, you are the person sending the email or signing the letter.

2. You’ll also want to build an insurance profile: contacts you’ll be reaching out to at the insurance companies, a list of your top 30 most utilized procedures and what you charge for them. If you want to find out if you should increase your fees look at the Fair Health site here.

3. Now that your profile is created, reach out to all insurance companies in your area. Create a short negotiating letter focused on why you are negotiating: to provide better patient care. Then set a deadline for them to respond within 4-5 business days.

4. This letter and all other communication needs to be trackable either electronically or with a paper copy so email, fax or certified mail is how you will negotiate. When the letter is done be sure it is emailed from your account, faxed with your signature or mailed via certified mail with your signature on it.

5. After they receive your communication you’ll hear from them. All insurance companies have their own negotiating policy so their response will vary but they will send you an offer.

6. To kid off the negotiations be sure you start high. Don’t accept the first offer, negotiate a few times, respectfully and cordially. Usually by the third round of negotiations you’ll both reach a happy medium.

If you’d rather not deal with this Ben’s firm handles all the negotiation steps for you. They’ve had 8 years of working and creating relationships within the industry so they can take care of your needs on your behalf.

On this episode Ben explains the details of working with him and his team, and we also talk about the biggest mistakes he sees dentists making right now (and how you can correct them), and some additional tips on working with the current insurance landscape.

You’ll want to listen in to get the full scoop from Ben on all of that! Reach out to him for a full analysis on your fees and a complimentary consultation.

Special thanks to Ben for his generous offer and for sharing such beneficial strategies on today’s show, and thanks to you for joining us as well. See you next time on The Dentalpreneur podcast.

Brady is a serial entrepreneur, published author and international speaker in the dental profession. He’s here to talk about how he’s bought and built multiple practices, how to plan for a wealthy retirement and the how you can master the single most profitable clinical procedure.

All of that and more on today’s episode of The Dentalpreneur.

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Dr. Brady and I met when we were both in dental school at Marquette University and we’ve been friends ever since.

Since his graduation day he’s been building practices. Starting his junior year he interviewed 72 dentists about their plans for retirement and what their ideal transition strategy would be. Just from those interviews 32 offered to sell him their practice! Of course he couldn’t buy as he wasn’t finished with school yet.

However he did see the opportunity and his senior year he put together paperwork to buy and on graduation day he did. Then he bought a second practice six months later and within 7 years he had purchased 7 practices.

In this episode you’ll hear:

Only 6% of dentists are able to retire with abundance before age 60: true or false?

What are the three career options for most doctors right after dental school?

Why it’s good to do good while doing – and what that means!

One partnership has a success rate of 94% – can you guess what it is?

The proper compensation formula for a junior doctor, Brady outlines in detail.

And much more!

Brady has strategies for how he bought these practices: transition deals. There are several types of transition deals and he outlines three on this show.

1. The first is to find a dental space that has equipment and the dentist has moved. you can take the lease and buy the equipment. You may have to update some of the technology like the computers but it’s still a low investment. The way to find these deals is through loop net, and realtors.

2. The second scenario is a dentist who has cut his schedule back. Find a dentist who has cut back from working 4 or 5 days a week to working just one or two.

Odds are they haven’t been able to sell because their overhead has skyrocketed and banks won’t finance a lender in that scenario. You can work with the transitioning dentist for them to carry the note and set up a repayment schedule.

Then add a junior partner, bring up the operations to a point where a bank will finance a buy and you buy out the transitioning dentist’s note.

Brady explains in full detail on the episode.

3. He also explains the third of his favorite transition deals: mergers. In essence with this scenario you purchase a doctor’s practice and pay certain $ amount for every chart that comes in. It’s an incredible boost if you can have that transitioning dentist write a note to all of his patients introducing you and giving you his seal of approval. That alone can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Brady gives great examples and complete details on this episode; he also explains the most profitable clinical procedure you can add to your practice without expanding your overhead: the implant.

He shares the 5 procedures that make implants simple, efficient predictable so you can implement them in your practice. From the osteo hybrid to the one drill implant, all the details are on this show. After you listen you can email Brady to find out about his course that will teach you these procedures; many dentists have doubled their practices just by using what he’s taught them!

We also chat about the proper compensation formula for junior doctors you add, why most dentists aren’t more financially successful and how you can best use compound interest to your advantage.

There’s a whole lot of great information on this episode, thanks to Brady’s generosity! Thanks to him and thanks to you for joining us. See you next time on The Dentalpreneur podcast.